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William Hazlitt

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    William Hazlitt

    Abuse is an indirect species of homage.

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    William Hazlitt

    A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.

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    William Hazlitt

    Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

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    William Hazlitt

    A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.

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    William Hazlitt

    A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.

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    William Hazlitt

    Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.

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    William Hazlitt

    A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

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    William Hazlitt

    A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.

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    William Hazlitt

    A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.

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    William Hazlitt

    A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.

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    William Hazlitt

    A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.

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    William Hazlitt

    A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them

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    William Hazlitt

    A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.

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    William Hazlitt

    A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.

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    William Hazlitt

    A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

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    William Hazlitt

    A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.

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    William Hazlitt

    A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.

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    William Hazlitt

    A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.

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    William Hazlitt

    A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.

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    William Hazlitt

    A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.

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    William Hazlitt

    All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.

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    William Hazlitt

    Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

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    William Hazlitt

    A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.

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    William Hazlitt

    A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.

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    William Hazlitt

    A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.

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    William Hazlitt

    A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

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    William Hazlitt

    A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.

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    William Hazlitt

    A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.

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    William Hazlitt

    A mighty stream of tendency.

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    William Hazlitt

    An honest man is respected by all parties.

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    William Hazlitt

    An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.

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    William Hazlitt

    A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

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    William Hazlitt

    A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.

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    William Hazlitt

    Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.

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    William Hazlitt

    Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

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    William Hazlitt

    Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.

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    William Hazlitt

    Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

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    William Hazlitt

    Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.

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    William Hazlitt

    A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

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    William Hazlitt

    A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.

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    William Hazlitt

    A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.

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    William Hazlitt

    Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

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    William Hazlitt

    Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.

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    William Hazlitt

    As a general rule, those who are dissatisfied with themselves will seek to go out of themselves into an ideal world. Persons in strong health and spirits, who take plenty of air and exercise, who are "in favor with, their stars," and have a thorough relish of the good things of this life, seldom devote themselves in despair to religion or the muses. Sedentary, nervous, hypochondriacal people, on the contrary, are forced, for want of an appetite for the real and substantial, to look out for a more airy food and speculative comforts.

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    William Hazlitt

    A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

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    William Hazlitt

    As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

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    William Hazlitt

    As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

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    William Hazlitt

    A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

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    William Hazlitt

    A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.

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    William Hazlitt

    As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence; and we become misers in this respect.